Gen Butt Naked confesses to nude killings

The commander earned his nom de guerre for charging into battle dressed only in his boots

By Mike Pflanz,
West Africa Correspondent

2:29PM GMT 20 Jan 2008

A former warlord known as General Butt Naked has confessed to Liberia's post-conflict reconciliation commission that his men killed 20,000 people during the country's civil war.

The feared rebel commander earned his nom de guerre for charging into battle dressed only in his boots, at the head of a gang of fighters known as the Butt Naked Battalion.

The nude gunmen became known for terrorising villagers and sacrificing children whose hearts they would eat before going into battle during Liberia's 14-year on-off civil war which ended in 2003.

"I have been looking for an opportunity to tell the true story about my life and every time I tell people my story, I feel relieved," General Butt Naked, whose real name is Milton Blayee, told The Associated Press.

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Mr Blayee returned from exile in Ghana, where he is now an evangelical Christian preacher, to face Liberia's truth and reconciliation commission last week.

Modelled on South Africa's post-apartheid hearings, the commission is airing the worst atrocities of Liberia's brutal wars, notorious for bands of drugged fighters dressed in wedding gowns and wigs.

More than 250,000 people are believed to have died during the conflict, which started in 1989.

Mr Blayee, 37, told the truth commission that he was initiated into the occult priesthood of the Krahn tribe at the age of 11, when he was first exposed to killing.

After the brutal videotaped torture and murder by rebels of Liberia's Krahn president, Samuel K Doe in 1990, Mr Blayee took up arms in revenge on behalf of his tribe.

"The political leaders and myself came to a term that if they wanted me to fight they should allow me make ... human sacrifices," he said.

The sacrifices included "the killing of an innocent child and plugging out the heart which was divided into pieces for us to eat. More than 20,000 people fell victim (to me and my men). They were killed."

Mr Blayee turned his back on war when, naked during a battle on a bridge outside Monrovia, he says God appeared to him and told him he was a slave to Satan and should repent.

The truth and reconciliation commission began two years of hearings in October 2006.

It can recommend prosecutions but its main mandate is to bring details to light of human rights violations to allow Liberians to heal the wounds of war.

Liberia's former president Charles Taylor is currently on trial for 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity at a separate tribunal at The Hague.